Case Study: Warehousing & Distribution

Moorsfresh a locally-grown produce marketing and distribution service in North Yorkshire with two facets to this service:

Ordering: Moorsfresh published a catalogue listing the produce offered by suppliers registered with them. This catalogue was offered to purchasers, who then order their produce directly from the suppliers.

Distribution: Moorsfresh operate a local distribution service using their own fleet of refrigerated vans. Operating on a number of routes, the vans pickup produce from suppliers each afternoon according to a pre-arranged schedule. The produce is stored overnight in a purpose-built refrigerated distribution facility, before being delivered to customers the following morning.The company wanted a system, delivered in a number of phases, to help them mange their operation, and asked Conducive Technologies to undertake the work.

Phase I of CTL's system went live in October 2002, coinciding with the launch of Moorsfresh's distribution service. It provided facilities for managing both clients and distribution, keeping track of supplier and customer details, and the collection agreements which Moorsfresh has with its suppliers. The system is used to accept orders from suppliers, indicating how many totes they want collected, where they want them delivered, and when they want them picked up. The system uses the order information to produce schedules for the vans, ensuring that goods are collected reliably, promptly, and are delivered to the correct destination. The system also allows capacity demands to be monitored, ensuring that the vans are not assigned more than they can carry, and are not operating near empty.

Phase II of the system, which adds barcode scanning of goods into and out of the warehouse to track inventory and deliveries has now been delivered and is in use .

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